Times of metastable droplet relaxation to equilibrium states

Abstract

Times of metastable droplet relaxation to their equilibrium state are calculated at saturated vapor pressures, depending on the droplet size. It is shown that for small droplets with radius R = 6 molecular diameters (or ~2 nm) the relaxation times are ~1 ns (which is comparable to the characteristic flight times of rarefied gas molecules). For large droplets with radius R ~ 800 molecular diameters, the relaxation times are as long as 10 μs. At a fixed droplet radius (6 ≤ R ≤ 800), the range of variation in relaxation time from the melting point to the critical temperature does not exceed one order of magnitude: the lower the temperature, the slower the relaxation process.